The Question
by Redlance-ck
Summary: After days of being tormented by a question that had reared its head after Helena's "Many of my lovers were men" comment, Myka finally voices it.


**Disclaimer**: Characters don't belong to me I'm just borrowing them for a while. I'll put them back once I'm done. Maybe. ;)

**A/N**: So this was supposed to be super short. Eight pages later, it's evident that it kind of got away from me. Hopefully it doesn't read like that. ;) As always, if you like, let me know! If you don't, constructive criticism is welcome. Though if you cut me, I do indeed bleed and words are sharp. That said, I am not unlike Tinker Bell in that I need applause to live. So don't be shy! Drop me a comment. :)

**These ladies are seriously messing with my headcanon. I'm of the opinion that H.G. and Myka never actually acting on their feelings, at least definitely not before the events of 'The Stand', but I'll get these ideas that can't really take place anywhere other than sometime in the second season and I'm either forced to become a hypocrite or just not write it. And I can't lie back and not write down an idea. So, this is set during sometime after Helena joins the Warehouse in season 2.**

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><p>She watched as Myka tiptoed around the question for days. With private amusement, Helena observed her as she went about her daily routines and suffered the duties of a Warehouse agent with nothing less than a smile, only to have her current task stalled by a thought unexpectedly thrusting itself to the forefront of her mind. Helena's gaze, unnoticed beyond the haze of Myka's reverie, would linger upon the taller woman's face and she would watch as the thought - the question - made itself present with a tell-tale blush that crept slowly upwards along the length of her neck, eventually reaching to colour her face. Myka would remember where she was then and dart her attention to Helena in a way that she hoped was surreptitious but never truly was, but Helena, always half a step ahead when it came to certain things, would have already averted her eyes. Turning them back to whatever book or manuscript or artifact record she was supposed to be studying.<p>

The game was a fun one, though Helena found it to be growing a might tedious as time wore on, and while it were true that she was indeed more accustomed to the slightly prudish women of her own time, part of her - a large part, she was not ashamed to admit - wished that Myka would oust her question so that they could both stop pretending that what charged the very molecules of air between them simply did not.

Helena's relief came on the sixth day, though it rode on the slightly abashed coattails of the hunt she'd been on for the better part of the morning, because Helena G. Wells had succumbed to seeking Myka out; no longer content with idling away the hours between missions and inventory alone. And if it were not too prideful or boastful to say so, Helena suspected that Myka found her company particularly welcome in return.

"So this is where you're hiding." She watched as Myka started violently and spun to face her, Helena's thick English droll shattering the silence and startling the woman. She'd created a kind of alcove around an old couch that had inexplicably been left in that area of the Warehouse, and she'd erected it entirely out of books. Hundreds, Helena suspected, surrounded the two-seater in columns three or four deep and level with the top of Myka's head. Myka clutched the book she'd been about to place atop one of the piles to her chest, closing her eyes behind her glasses and allowing jittery laughter to spill past her lips.

"Helena." She breathed, opening her eyes once more as a smile curved over her lips. "You scared the life out of me." An elegant eyebrow arched, Helena's face becoming a painted mask of wry humour.

"And yet you look positively flushed with the accelerated beating of your heart." She chuckled, wandering close to one of the slightly precariously stacked piles and picking up the topmost one. Her eyes scanned the cover; a green hardback that had become frayed at the edges with age, it bore a title she didn't instantly recognise. She flipped it open and began perusing. "Whatever are you doing with all these books, darling?" A groan lifted from the taller woman, pulling Helena's gaze up and over. Myka was bent towards the small stacks of books at her feet, absently selecting two at random before she righted herself and turned to face her fellow agent. A few unruly curls had escaped the loose ponytail she'd swept her hair back into, framing her face and falling against the lens of her glasses. Helena felt a small smile slid onto her lips as she watched that particular curl fly into the air with an exhalation of breath.

"Something I'm probably going to regret starting any minute now." Myka admitted with a sheepish grin, brushing her hair away with her fingers only to have it fall stubbornly back into place. She glanced down at the books in her hands, reading the titles and then moving towards Helena to place the one in her right atop a pile behind the one the inventor stood in front of. "Categorizing and alphabetizing." She finished, biting her lower lip in trepidation as she reached up and gingerly lowered the book onto the top of the stack. It wobbled, but did not fall, and she released her lip with a sigh of relief and turned to smile at the woman before her. "Do you have any idea how many books are in here? Claudia thinks I have a death wish and that I'm likely to end up in the Univille ER with mass paper cuts." She winkled her nose at the vision and suppressed a shudder. "My hope is that none of these are artifacts that can cause those kinds of injuries, but just in case." Myka held up her hands to indicate the purple gloves she'd donned and then dropped the one not holding a book to tap at her back pocket, which was stuffed with static bags. Helena cracked a smile.

"Is there nothing you are not prepared for?" She questioned teasingly and Myka paused in her bend to place the second book at the base of a too-tall stack, starting another. Her lips slid into a half smirk as she straightened with another book in hand, glancing sidelong at Helena with a kind of hesitant mirth shining in her eyes.

"Well, I definitely wasn't prepared for you." The inventor's eyebrows hiked almost to her hairline, but a smile played about her lips as Myka turned away, seeming almost shy in the moment at either what she'd said or was about to say. Whatever, the case, it prompted Helena to remain silent, curiosity as to where the other woman's mind was wandering sealing her lips. "Although I dreamed of meeting famous authors, even the great H.G. Wells, I never thought I'd end up working in a building where those kind of occurrences are..." she paused in her traversing of the smaller stacks of books, tilting her head as her gaze went unfocused against the Warehouse before her. "Not really commonplace, but **possible**, you know?" Helena hummed quietly and, placing the book upon its allotted stack, Myka chuckled. "But had I expected to someday meet **the** H.G. Wells, I'm pretty positive I would have expected a man." Turning back, Myka found Helena appraising her with eyebrows still raised.

"Did you not? Before our first meeting in London?" She queried, giving the taller woman pause.

"I guess I did. Funny," Myka smiled, a fondness lighting her face. "That day seems like a lifetime ago now." A fondness she found returned in earnest by the woman standing before her.

"A great many things it seems have changed since then." Helena glanced around at the many wonders surrounding them. "Not least of which being my place within the Warehouse and the very world itself." She set her focus back to Myka, her green eyes sparkling in the light from the Shelby bulbs reflecting against the lenses of her glasses. "And I have you to thank for that." For a moment, words refused to leave Myka's mouth despite her working it, but she finally managed to wave dismissively and force out a self-deprecating scoff.

"I didn't-"

"Agent Bering," Helena interrupted, the slight upturn of her lips the only thing softening the chastising tone of her words. "I will not stand here and allow you to downplay your part in my return. Both in the small and grander sense." Helena took a step forward, hands clasped loosely before her, only now looking a little unsure. "You were instrumental." Myka dropped her gaze for a second in a moment of bashfulness. "And I fear I may never be able to thank you enough." Her head snapped back up, a surprised determination shifting her features.

"Helena..." Her sentence trailed to nothing as the want to convey utter sincerity banished words that seemed meaningless when compared to her feelings from Myka's mind. "You have nothing you need to thank me for." It seemed to her such a poor excuse for what she'd wanted to be a heartfelt statement and her frustration manifested itself as a frown that creased a deep line between her brows. "I wanted-" Helena could see the way Myka forcibly halted the words as they threatened to throw themselves from the tip of her tongue, pulling them back and replacing them with ones more subdued in nature. "This is where you belong." But nevertheless forcible enough to cause shockwaves upon impact.

Fingers laced together in front of her, Helena's hands clenched convulsively at the words, and she was unable to school her expression away from the one of shock and heartfelt gratitude she was certain she wore in the wake of Myka's voiced opinion. After a minute that saw them share a gaze so intense that both women forgot their usual need to draw breath, Myka's lips parted and curved into a smile that saw mischief playing about its corners and reaching towards her eyes.

"The great H.G. Wells," she began, voice carrying the authoritativeness of a ring announcer. "Rendered speechless by the words of ordinary Myka Bering." Her tone turned self-deprecating once more and finally broke the inventor from her stupor.

"You," Helena said, the tone of her own voice turning playfully warning, "are so very far beyond 'ordinary' that I am surprised you have not lost sight of the word altogether." Myka grinned, turning back to her books and moving idly about the stacks as she continued to sort through the piles.

"I think your opinion of me might be a little bias." Helena quirked an eyebrow at Myka's back, watching as the woman reached to settle a book atop one of her created columns and then allowed her eyes to drift downwards as a slip of skin became visible with the rising of Myka's shirt.

"Whatever gives you that impression, darling?" Aware of Myka's pivoting, Helena smirked as she let her gaze linger a little longer at the spot where flesh had once more disappeared beneath fabric, only pulling her gaze up when she was sure Myka was facing her. Their eyes met, fathomless brown orbs twinkling with a teasing mirth that boarded somewhere close to the serious, and ones turned a deep forest green in the artificial light of the Warehouse that somehow seemed to mirror the flush blooming across Myka's cheeks. Helena, watching intently as the emotions played across the taller woman's face, refused to let her attention drop, enjoying the progression of the blush as it traversed the planes of Myka's neck and face. A hand came up to brush away at the curls falling into her eyes and, after opening her mouth to speak and then seeming to think better of it, Myka ensnared her lower lip between her teeth. Dropping her focus to the floor, she shifted awkwardly in place, passing the book she held between her hands in nervous uncertainty, and Helena sighed quietly. "My apologies, Myka. I've made you uncomfortable." Myka's head bobbed up with a motion that seemed to mimic the motion of the snapping of an elastic band.

"No. You didn't." She insisted with a shake of her head, blushing deeper still at the vehemence of her words.

"I've not offended you?" Helena found herself asking, hesitation lacing the question. Myka tilted her head, attention set in Helena's direction but looking somewhere past her.

"No. I'm just, not used to..." she stirred the air about her with a pointless gesture, "such perspicuous, uh-"

"You use a word such as 'perspicuous' with not a second's thought and yet flounder upon 'flirting'?" Helena interrupted with a chuckle despite her lingering unease at the notion that she might have offended her friend. Myka cracked a half-smile, sheepish at being caught.

"I'm not usually so brazenly flirted with." She finally said, putting emphasis on the word she had previously struggled with. Helena's expression dropped unexpectedly and she ducked her head to capture Myka's gaze with a look of concern.

"Oh dear," she said, her expression close to grave but never quite reaching it. "Has the last century seen a drastic decline in mankind's vision?" Unconsciously, Myka touched the bridge of her glasses, sliding them up from where they'd slid and back into their proper resting place as she frowned in confusion. Helena came forward then, stooping to rest her forearms atop a pile of books that stood just below the line of her breasts. "Well surely that can be the only conclusion to deduce from what you've told me? Why else should a woman with a beauty as unmatched as yours find herself lacking the attention of those around her? When she is worthy of having an uncountable number of men and women fall with the slightest glance in their direction." Myka stared unblinking as Helena smiled at her, the Englishwoman's lips eventually parting to allow a peal of laughter to escape unfettered after an indiscernible amount of time had passed. It was, however, long enough for Myka to recognise she had not drawn breath recently, and she released the one she hadn't realised she'd been holding in an embarrassingly noticeable whoosh of air. Helena watched with an intent kind of pleasure as the woman before her grew flustered, the smile fighting for purchase of Myka's mouth seeming to shift her lips about her face though they never truly moved.

"You're…" she tried and failed, prompting Helena to grin more widely.

"Charming? Brilliant? Devastatingly handsome?" Myka rolled her eyes, smile still in place, and turned away from her fellow agent.

"All of the above." She mumbled wryly, picking up another book so as to divert her attention without too much suspicion. "That's exactly what I'm talking about, though." Myka tossed a quick glance over her shoulder, making another wide gesture with her free hand. "The flirting. I'm not **offended** Helena," she stressed, wanted to ease Helena's earlier fear. "And it's not…" she paused, teeth flashing against her bottom lip. "It's not because you're a woman, it just isn't something I ever became accustomed to dealing with." Curious now, the inventor shifted from her position leaning against the books, carefully so as not to topple them, and moved a little further into the alcove Myka had created, coming to a stop a few feet behind her. Helena absently fingered the ring she wore, watching Myka bend to retrieve a few more books and set them in an order the madness of which she could not yet determine.

"Does Agent Lattimer not likewise converse with you in a way that is coquettish, though I'm sure far more masculine?" At that Myka actually snorted, albeit very delicately, and she held her fingers up to her mouth and took a moment to gather herself.

"Pete's version of flirting," she began, gently placing a small hardback atop a lager book that had somehow over the years lost its front covering, "consists mainly of indistinct Neanderthal-type speech and a kind of leering that somehow manages to successfully straddle the line between lecherous and a sort of puppy dog quality." Myka's face turned thoughtful as she spoke, only vaguely aware of Helena's gaze as it burned pleasantly against her back, and then she seemed to sigh and giggle at the same time. "Your flirting is decidedly different." Behind her, Helena hummed aloud.

"Yes, I do suppose I see your point, though I'm not above leering I'm afraid." Myka spun, catching brown eyes as they rose a little too slowly and never once lost their glint of mischief.

"Helena!" The scandalous look Myka wore pulled another peal of laughter from the inventor, dark hair swaying as she allowed her head to fall back and threw her humour to the rafters. Bringing it back, she threaded her fingers through inky tresses, shaping them haphazardly around her face before letting her arms hang loosely at her sides.

"Forgive me, darling." And Myka could not recall having ever seen H.G. Wells pout before. "It's just that you are so terribly fun to tease and effortlessly adorable when the colour of embarrassment lights your cheeks." With a groan, Myka turned away again, and Helena had the fleeting thought that it seemed as though the other woman were forever forcing herself away from her.

"I don't know what I'm going to do with you." And as soon as the words left Myka's lips, green eyes slammed shut, because the realisation of what she'd set in motion seemed to without fail always arrive a second too late.

"I could propose a number of suggestions." Myka bit at the inside of her cheek as the tone of Helena's voice slipped over her like molten lava, alighting certain spots on her body like candlewicks, causing her flesh to burn. So sultry and seductive, it fogged her brain and rendered her thought process utterly pointless as she found all she could dredge up were visions that set her cheeks burning hottest of all. Visions that she was positive she should most definitely not be having about a co-worker. At the very least, it would make working beside them incredibly difficult if Myka's current position were any indication. Worrying her lower lip, she forced her eyes open in a poor attempt to banish the images.

"I don't doubt that." The words spilled from Myka's mouth in a low whisper, carrying a weight akin to that of the calm before a storm. Having the potential to lead anywhere. Her gaze became unfocused as her mind sent her back to a moment that had taken place days earlier, while she'd been in the company of the woman behind her, as well as Pete and Claudia, and when six words had been uttered with a carelessness that gave no warning whatsoever of the fact that they would plague her for the better part of a week. It was silly really and Myka was a bright woman, she knew that, but the idea of voicing the question knotted the pit of her stomach in a manner similar to the way the idea of skydiving without a parachute did. It turned her mouth into a veritable desert and her harsh swallow scratched along the length of her throat like sandpaper. Despite what the little voice in the back of her mind was screaming at her, Myka Bering was not a coward. "Helena, can I… can I ask you something?" Her hesitant hedging made the inventor freeze momentarily and sent her heart hammering in her chest. Helena was not someone who easily grew faint in the presence of someone for whom she'd garnered great affection. In fact, her history told a tale of quite the opposite; she had a habit of making specimens of both genders swoon before her. But the fluttering in her chest at the barest hint of Myka's lips poised to voice a question the inventor knew for certain had been tormenting the younger woman told her that the woman before her was unlike any of the people she'd come to know in her past; intimately or otherwise. Of course, Helena knew that. Had known it almost from the very instant they'd met, but the affirmation of it made her uncharacteristically lightheaded. Somehow, she wrestled her mouth - suddenly dry with the anxiety of the moment - into working.

"I find myself free of most restraints while in your company." Helena said with a lilting sigh, absently thumbing her ring again. "Which is to say; you may ask me anything." She watched with a fond curiosity as Myka's posture stiffened as she steeled herself and then she came alive as she turned to face Helena, curls flying wildly with the motion.

"You've been with women." There was a second, which rolled steadily into a moment, where Myka's face betrayed her inner horror at having voiced her thoughts so bluntly. She blushed again, silently cursing the reaction for what seemed like the thousandth time that day, and clenched her jaw, repeatedly working the muscles there in some effort to regain at the very least a modicum of composure. For her part, Helena merely lifted an eyebrow archly and allowed a light smirk to ghost across her lips.

"Yes." She finally spoke, drawing out the word in some torturous prolongation of embarrassment; or so it seemed to Myka. "Indeed I have." Helena paused again, lips quirking further upwards as the urge to tease continued its incessant pulling. "Agent Bering," she trilled, "is your question one that is Sapphic in nature?" Folding under the weight of bashfulness, green eyes dropped to the dusty floor of the Warehouse as slim fingers traces the frayed patterns adorning the armrest of the couch.

"Is that so unusual?" Myka's voice sounded odd even to her own ears. "To have those kinds of questions?" Helena swallowed convulsively and found the action rather strange after having witnessed so many of her lovers enact it.

"Not at all." She said, hoping her voice seemed soothing despite the sudden rough edge to it. "Though perhaps I'm not the ideal person you should be voicing that particular question to." Helena mused wryly, her smile faltering only slightly at the corners as Myka turned to face her again. Her face had become shadowed, however slightly, with the darkness of uncertainty and anxiety lifted her hand to one more brush as the curls that rested against the lenses of her glasses.

"What about my first question?" Helena pursed her lips in response.

"Well, that wasn't really a question at all now was it?" Snaring her lower lip, Myka's gaze darted over what Helena suspected to be every item that lined the shelf behind her before finally meeting her gaze.

"What's it like?" And the 'it' in question was so incredibly self-explanatory, that Helena didn't waste a second wondering whether or not she should confirm her suspicions. The meaning was as plain as the fluster that clung to the taller woman like a second skin, unable to shed its awkward cumbersomeness. "I mean, maybe it's just my natural inquisitiveness or maybe..." Myka found that she was over-explaining herself into a corner and clamped her lips tightly together, even as Helena continued to smile at her in that calmly maddening way.

"Though I find such questions to largely befit answers that can best be conveyed through demonstration..." The word hung between them for a second or two, causing Myka's heart to sputter and skip. "I suppose I should at the very least attempt to explain verbally." Helena paused, appearing to do it more for dramatic storytelling than anything else. "It is not **so** different from being with a man." The statement drew Myka's surprise from her without warning, raising her eyebrows so quickly it was almost comical and Helena let loose a brief flutter of laughter. She slid her hands into the pockets of her trousers, glancing down at the tips of her boots for a brief moment in a way that suggested a gathering of thoughts. "The passion is the same, the primal urge to feel, and be felt." Dark eyes flickered across Myka's face, taking in the imperceptible twitch of muscles and the wild fluttering at the pulse point below her jaw. "There are differences of course, as there are between lovers of the same gender." Absently, the inventor took a step forward, glancing down over the tops of the smaller piles of books and running a hand over one she recognised. "Though some are indeed more keenly felt when comparing one's male and female partners." Their eyes met again as Helena took another step, slowly closing the gap between them. Myka swallowed audibly, but didn't allow her evident discomfiture to quiet her this time.

"Such as?" She queried, her voice stronger than she would have expected it to be had she been overly concerned about it, which at that moment she wasn't. The corners of Helena's lips twitched and Myka let herself be captured by the movement.

"The men I have taken to my bed," the taller woman started unexpectedly at the words, feeling something akin to a wave of fire roiling against the pit of her stomach. "I found them to lack the curvature that has so rightfully become symbolic of the female form. They're all harsh lines and rough stubble, but a woman..." The word dripped from Helena's lips as something very close to an indecent moan of approval, thick with a remembered desire, and Myka felt her palms begin to sweat as she silent asked herself why on earth she'd probed for answers to such a question, and found an reasons unreachable. Dark eyes burning, Helena captured Myka's gaze and the taller woman felt a kind of invisible deadbolt slide into place, locking them together with an unexplainable sound that resonated somewhere deep within her. "They are soft beneath your fingers and their muscles tremble at your touch in a way no man's ever could." Accent as thick as ever, Helena's voice became a low rumble as she spoke, almost a purr. "There is a naivety to a nervous woman who, while tentative, is gripped by the arms of passion that is quite as unexplainable as it is desirable, and it is unmatched. There's a warmness to the lovemaking, a softness in the meeting of flesh once clothes has been shed that is so exquisite, there aren't words to explain it. There are many reasons I tend to favour the female form, Myka. The warmth, the wetness, the way cries of pleasure are often similar enough to mingle and become one." The blood rushed in Myka's ears loud enough that she couldn't help but wonder how she was able to hear the other woman speaking over the sound. "In a way, making love to a woman is not so different from making love to oneself." Myka's heart rate spiked at the words, the implications, and her mind became suddenly flooded with visuals she had no hope of staving off. She cleared her throat and tried desperately to keep her eyes open, focused. Fearing that if she closed them, she might never wish to open them again. "In the sense that a woman knows what it is that she herself finds pleasing and so has some frame of reference when wondering what another woman might enjoy. At least, that is a theory to which I tested many of my... relations." Helena paused before the last word, wanting to find the one that best suited. Her feet came to a swaying stop less than a foot from Myka, not yet close enough to breech any carefully erected barriers of personal space, but definitely close enough to push the boundaries of it.

"And did you find that your theory..." Myka paused to draw a breath that turned shaky partway through her inhale. Both women noticed, too close not to, but neither commented. "Sufficed?" Though it did cause Myka to flounder ever so slightly. Helena chuckled, the ghost of her breath brushing the taller woman's face, and her eye flickered, changing somehow.

"I think you'd find any anecdotal evidence of my work positively glowing." Something about Helena's expression turned almost predatory as she spoke, her ego as clear as day though not unbearably so, and Myka swallowed again.

"I don't doubt that." She had the vague impression of the couch behind her and wondered when she'd pressed her back against the reassuring sturdiness of the front of the arm.

"Tell me, Myka." Helena breathed, leaning in closer and brushing a curl back out of Myka's eyes, an act that caused the now silent woman's breath to catch. "What is it exactly that you **do** find yourself doubting?" Their closeness seemed to charge the very air between them, unseen sparks flaring in their threat to ignite. Myka's face loomed before her, unsure and beautiful and Helena wondered, not for the first time, what it was she was hoping to achieve. She'd thought that it had started as a simple want for Myka to voice the question that had so obviously been pestering her since the inventor had planted its insidious seed in her brain. But that wasn't entirely true; this little game, this hunt, had been a means to an end. One of many paths she could have chosen to take in a labyrinth that Myka evidently lay at the centre of. Because it seemed to Helena that all roads did inevitably lead her back to the American.

"I..." Words did not fail Myka very often and Helena couldn't help but wonder what, specifically, was causing their desertion. Was it what she had spoken of? The effects of their closeness? The idea that Myka had finally given life to a question she could not take back? Perhaps all of the above, but Helena would not be afforded the opportunity of prolonged thought on the matter. Her vision suddenly became obscured and she barely had time to comprehend why before she felt the quiet pressure of Myka's lips against her own. Her entire body flinched, as though statically shocked, and she only had the briefest moment to register just how soft the lips against her were before they were gone. Myka leaned back, her arms hanging uselessly at her sides and hands balled into fists; the last remaining vestiges of her control. "Oh." The surprised whisper filled the quiet with the strength of a harshly rung bell, and Helena watched through eyes that had never had time to close as Myka's expression shifted from one of muted wonder to one of panicked regret. "Oh." She said again, her timber changing to reflect the look on her face. "Okay, that was- I shouldn't have, i didn't mean to-" As she continued to interrupt herself, Myka's words fell on pleasantly deaf ears. Her mother had often accused Helena of selective hearing and though it behoved her to admit defeat, the Englishwoman allowed a wry smile at the memory of being chastised as she lost herself in the wildly gesturing agent before her. "H.G. can you please say something?" Blinking, Helena came out of her revere to find Myka staring at her in a mix of worry and agitation, their eye lines level now the taller woman had taken a seat on the very edge of the armrest. Lips parting in a wide smile, Helena let the happiness of the moment fill her.

"I do wish you'd asked me sooner." She said, ducking her head even as Myka's eyes widened like they sometimes did before she launched headfirst into some tirade or another, and claimed full lips for her own in a kiss she was determined to make sure lasted long enough for her to register every moment of it.


End file.
